Maybe those exaggerated public displays of affection got too embarrassing. Or maybe he caught her watching one of Lord Monckton's YouTube videos debunking AGW. Or maybe he's as insufferable at home as he is in the public arena. Probably, as others have said, he wants to cash in some of his carbon-credits on an adoring young trophy.

I have had so little respect for Al Gore for so many years that nothing he does could diminish it further.

Seriously; after 40+ years, why would anyone cheat? Don't you get beyond that sort of thing at that point? Doesn't the other person eventually become more important to you than your own life, let alone your own remarkably long-lived adolescent urges?

Why would you divorce that person for any reason at that point? Even if my wife loses her mind in 30 years, I'll stay with her, for fuck's sake.

Maybe she bought low and is selling high. When you see the carbon credit market peak, you get out. Tipper wants to split the $100M he's worth today not the $1M he'll be worth when that market collapses.

Meade -- agreed, 40 days would actually be too soon. There's a sweet spot there between those two extremes -- right around the seven year itch.

But even that seven-year cliche presupposes that the spouses are still young enough to be so self-absorbed as to allow their animal urges to overpower the regard they hold for their spouse. Nobody is a selfish adolescent after 40 years of marriage.

This is just a little odd. I'd say after 20 years you've pretty much committed yourself for the duration.

He survived the 7-year itch, the 14-year itch, the 21-year itch, the 28-year itch, the 35-year itch, and then... the onset of the 42-year itch was finally just too much. He had to go for some other woman's warm globes?

"When my sister and I were growing up," Mr. Gore told a small audience made up mostly of women, "there was never any doubt in our minds that men and women were equal, if not more so." (Source: NY Times, 08/12/00)

He survived the 7-year itch, the 14-year itch, the 21-year itch, the 28-year itch, the 35-year itch, and then... the onset of the 42-year itch was finally just too much. He had to go for some other woman's warm globes?

Railby said: "Maybe she bought low and is selling high. When you see the carbon credit market peak, you get out. Tipper wants to split the $100M he's worth today not the $1M he'll be worth when that market collapses."

I do pass judgment on you for things you say and write about public issues. More for the vacuous and unfounded attacks on people who disagree with you and the inability to have a rational conversation.

Plus the conservative hate, there's that. Lots of that.

Not for your personal lives and relationships. For example, all I've had to say on the Althouse-Meade thing is basically "congrats."

It's interesting. This news was released only this morning but has probably already gotten more news coverage than the cuckolding/payola sex/embezzling scandal engulfing Senator John Ensign (R-NV).

An interesting study in contrasts. Senator John Ensign is under investigation by the FBI for misuse of campaign funds and, I think, for the way his parent's paid off his mistress' husband to keep quiet. May have been law breaking there, too.

Oh, and then there's the legislative favors he did for an energy company funneling hush money to the cuckolded husband.

Typical humorless, lefty narcissistic droning. Here we are having a few yucks at the expense of a humorless narcissistic bore, and you make the mistake of thinking anyone gives a shit what you think. Lighten up. It's better to be a witty prick than just a prick.

Maybe they've wanted to separate for a long time (for any number of reasons), but they've stayed together so he'd have the option of running for president, and now he's definitely decided not to run for president again.

It must have been hard to cope the loss(read theft) of 2000 election -- losing a presidential election in the way he had to in 2000 is monumental. More so for Tipper because she may have had to put up with his depression and mood swings(I can't imagine there were none). To top it here comes the global warming debacle which may have just been the last straw. The stress of it all and whatever they both did to keep it together may not have been enough.

More interesting news about Senator John Ensign, which makes one wonder why the press doesn't find the story interesting:

* Republican Senator John Ensign who was schtupping Cynthia Hampton, who was married to one of his top aides, Douglas Hampton.

* Republican Senator John Ensign was a member of the "C Street" fellowship in Washington, DC. A crypto-Christian haven for religious hypocrites.

* "In early 2008, Ensign was confronted by Douglas Hampton regarding the affair. Ensign then contacted political and corporate supporters in Nevada, seeking work for Hampton." "Ensign arranged for Hampton to join a political consulting firm in Nevada and lined up several corporations who had been Ensign campaign donors as lobbying clients for Hampton. Senior aides, such as Hampton, are prohibited from lobbying the Senate for a year after leaving their posts. Hampton said he and Ensign were aware of the lobbying restriction but chose to ignore it."

*"In 2008, after Hampton began working for the political consulting firm, Ensign and his staff repeatedly contacted federal agencies, often after requests from Hampton, on behalf of the companies that were Hampton's clients."

How this story doesn't generate more press, I will never understand. It's got sex, money, greed, corruption, hypocrisy, false religiosity. Hunh

you need the constitution of Hillary to go through a grand theft (like the '08 primary or '00 general for Gore) and still be standing and being productive and making yourself useful to the country you love and to the rest of the world. Hats off to that likable enough woman.

Ha!!! You wouldn't know the first thing about that now would you. You've been judged to be an unmitigated liar and rancid propagandist by me. You lie at every turn. Nothing you've said here in your entire tenure has been truthful.

Hey, who here's even all that afraid of being judged? I'm not. I've never understood why people get all up in arms about someone, who they neither know nor respect the opinion of, may think something negative about them.

pm317 said...It must have been hard to cope the loss(read theft) of 2000 election -- losing a presidential election in the way he had to in 2000 is monumental

is a monumental lie.

There fixed it.

Go google the election recount by the NY Times and other papers of note.

Alpha -- I believe the coverup and 3 monkey stance of the MSM in regard to John Edwards (they were running for the presidential nomination while he was sleeping with Hunter for cryin' out loud!) should be a major story. Don't you?

It must have been hard to cope the loss(by being so incredibly wooden and lying that the voters mistook him for Pinnochio) of 2000 election -- losing a presidential election in the way he had to in 2000 is monumental.FIFY

If there is anything like a global warming cabal...not saying there is, but stay with me...than what we should see over the next weeks and months are key figures starting to distance themselves or divest themselves from it. Why? Because very few people would be better educated on what went on behind closed doors than Gore's soon-to-be ex-wife.

Frankly, there doesn't have to be some Star Chamber cabal re AGW in order for this to happen. Keep on eye on the key players for the rest of the year though with this split in mind.

I agree with Lem. I think the Gores are decent people. Don't agree with their politics nor the global warming baloney, but I am sorry for the Gores and their family--41 years with the same partner, in this day and age, is something to be proud of IMO. Seems to me to be an excessive amount of schadenfreude on this thread.

I think the Gores are decent people. Don't agree with their politics nor the global warming baloney

I'll have to respectfully disagree there. I think his decency leaves a lot to be desired when his desired cures for 'global warming' will leave a whole lot of impoverishment while he resides in a gazillion sq/ft house on the beach. He may have been decent but I think that was before he became a con man.

Why is this automatically a bad thing. 41 years may have been just enough and both want to live differently now. They may both be much happier for the remainder of their years pursuing new lives enjoying a long repressed freedom and independence with plenty of money to do it as they wish. I assume they both want this over what they had, a win - win. Congratulations to both of them.

I was watching "Pawn Stars" on the History Channel over the Labor Day Weekend. You know the show about the Pawn shop in Vegas where all these weird people bring in weird stuff to pawn or sell.

Anyway this weird Guido guy from Brooklyn with fifty Pez Dispensers in a big carrying case. He had a real asshole attitude and even called the hapless retard Chumley a Chootch which is Sicilian slang for a big dummy. They bargain back and forth and Rick the owner offers him like $100 for the whole collection which makes the guy freak out. He grabs all his Pez Dispensers and leaves in a huff.

When they interview outside he goes “That freakin guy doesn’t know what he is talking about. $100 for a collection that includes the original Batman, Mickey Mouse, Bozo and Popeye Pez Dispensers? You what that is? It’s an insult to the Pez community!”

I have always pictured AlphaLiberal as a political Pez Dispenser. A long emaciated body with a bulbous head that spits out talking points and drivel like Pez.

"Seems to impart an instability to children's lives that they have a very hard time escaping throughout life."

It could, but I just don't see that. My mother is on husband #4, yet my sibling and I are happy, stable and normal. Divorce is a norm nowadays, and the close nuclear family we idolize is not at all the dominant form in history. It can be great or terrible as can be a divorce.

I'm glad that my mother divorced my father. He was a good man, but she was unhappy and the divorce did make her happy and our family carried on quite successfully. Additionally, my father stayed close and in my life till his death. Divorce does not have to be a terrible conflict with hard feelings. In my family's case, it was simply a decision to make an improvement and fix a mistake. Nobody, had any animosity afterward.

At Christmas, we would often have 3 different fathers visiting simultaneously. My mother is an exceptional woman.

When he lost a close "disputed" election he didn't man up like Tricky Dick Nixon did when he got screwed by Daley in Cook County and Johnson in Texas. It was the same exact situation; a sitting vice president lost a razor close election. By protesting and dragging it out he encouraged the crazies on both sides to poison the well to the point that we are at today.

Al Gore is the Danielle Staub of politics. He shows up a fundraiser for a baby with cancer with a bunch of paroled felons and Hells Angels and wonders why people think he's a freakin psycho.

Sixty Grit said..."When there is a fortune involved, and one party hires a lawyer, divorce is a certainty. The best family lawyers will not leave money on the table. Couldn't happen to two more deserving individuals."

And you base this on your extensive experience as a divorce attorney?

And what in the world do you mean when you say it "Couldn't happen to two more deserving individuals."

Two people who evidently loved love each other and remained married for 40 years, deserved...what?

Half the people in America get divorced...what have you got to say about them?

All of the whining about Gore's efforts to educate people about global warming...and the tea baggers here (just like all of them) will be the first to beg for help from "big government" when the shit hits the fan.

AlphaLiberal said... I do pass judgment on you for things you say and write about public issues. More for the vacuous and unfounded attacks on people who disagree with you and the inability to have a rational conversation.

Of course, look at all the energy Al and Tipper saved by remaining married for 40 years...contrary to the fat man and his three ex-wives. (Or...how about YOU and the Queen?)

And don't forget all of the energy it takes to woof down that food the fat man shovels in every day...along with those illicit drugs.

Ahhhh... The human cum dumpster, Jeremy shows up again to let people make a deposit. So, Jeremy, how much of Mr. ManBearPigs love nectar did you have to guzzle to work up the nerve to show up here to defend him? Oh, looks like you missed a little on the side.

My great aunt, after more than fifty years on the farm with my great uncle (not to mention 10+ kids - Big WNY Polish Catholic famly) actually divorced him, as she was "tired of being married." When, a couple years later, Great Uncle was diagnosed with cancer, she was there with him - took care of him until he died.

***

My mother (died last year; am still trying to find good words about her - maybe these are it?) divorced my dad very uglily when I was four or five - early 70s, anyway. Just before 9/11, when my dad had the multiple bypass, she was actually the one who was taking care of him, but didn't say anything about it. When he got better, they kept up a weekly routine - she'd cook for him, he'd take out the trash for her and her upstairs neighbor. This continued until he got the word that she'd been taken to the hospital last Fall.

Who knows why people divorce? Maybe there's a problem with the institution? Maybe we have expectations nowadays that weren't in effect when the institution was developed, way back when? I don't know.

(BTW - despite Tipper's past politics, I actually voted for Gore against Bush in the early aughts.)